Push No One Behind

JULY 2019
Push no one behind

How current economic policy exacerbates gender
inequality
Agenda 2030, with its “leave no one behind” principle, set important ambitions for
gender equality and women’s rights. Yet with only a decade remaining in its
mandate, progress against these ambitions is way off course. In this briefing we
suggest that the problem is not just that women are left behind but that they are
pushed behind by current economic policies including austerity, labour market
flexibilization, privatisation and liberalisation of trade and investment rules. These
policies exacerbate and sometimes even exploit entrenched gender inequalities,
from access to jobs and wage gaps to discriminatory norms around unpaid care
and domestic work. Moreover, international financial institutions and
governments alike continue to advocate these economic policies, even in the face
of mounting evidence of their ill effects. But such policies are not, we argue,
inevitable—and we point to a myriad of alternative approaches that governments
could pursue.
Original artwork: Snigdha Podder, for Gender and Development Network

1. Introduction
Agenda 2030 sets high ambitions for gender equality and women’s rights: it recognises
that gender equality is central to sustainable development, it affirms the concept of
reaching the most marginalised first with “leave no one behind” and it nods to the need
to tackle root causes if these aspirations are to be achieved.1
Yet progress has been slow. Too often, efforts to promote women’s rights fail to address
the structural barriers that stand in the way of equality, with very little understanding of
how intersecting discriminations compound the problem. As we pursue implementation
of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it is now time to take a hard look at what
is hindering progress.
Women are not simply left behind—they are pushed.i Women are pushed back not just
by discriminatory laws and social norms that stand in the way of progress, but by the
economic policies that are known to discriminate against women and yet continue to be
implemented.2 In the face of substantial evidence of the harms that they do, these same
economic policies are adopted again and again in the name of growth, effectively
shutting women out from the fruits of economic development. By leaving these structural
barriers undisturbed, governments, international financial institutions (IFIs) and
corporations sign up to the worthy new commitments of Agenda 2030 with one hand
while entrenching inequality with the other.
In this briefing, we look first at the aspirations laid out in Agenda 2030, and then at some
of the ways that many women—particularly those facing intersecting forms of
discrimination—are left, or pushed, behind. We then focus on current economic policies,
particularly around austerity, cuts to jobs and wages, labour flexibilization, and trade and
investment liberalisation, taking a closer look at how each of these economic policies
has increased gender inequality.
The evidence suggests that the SDGs cannot be fully achieved if economic policy
continues down its current path. As Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, the UN Independent Expert
on debt and human rights, concludes, “Economic reform should aim to prevent gender
discrimination and transform existing inequalities, instead of creating such situations”. 3
There are alternative models available, so we point to some of these and conclude by
calling for governments, IFIs and corporations alike to stand up for gender equality by
recognising—and rectifying—the role of austerity and neoliberal policies in pushing
women behind.
2. Agenda 2030—great expectations?

Agenda 2030 brings with it welcome and ambitious commitments on gender equality—
commitments that, in contrast to those in the Millennium Development Goals, are
“universally applicable” to countries in the Global North and in the Global South alike.4
These include Goal 5 (“achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”), as
iThanks to Diane Elson, who first coined this phrase “push no one behind”, looking at a broad panoply of
development impacts. This briefing adapts her concept and focuses more narrowly on particular areas of
economic policy and gender inequality.
Push no one behind www.gadnetwork.org 2

well as explicit commitments to tackle additional barriers facing women that fall under
the remit of several other Goalsii and an overarching pledge to the “systematic
mainstreaming of a gender perspective in the implementation of the Agenda”.5 The
Agenda recognises women’s economic empowerment as a central component of
achieving the SDGs, a message further reinforced when the UN Secretary General
established a High-Level Panel on women’s economic empowerment in 2016.6
In addition, core to the Agenda is the concept of “leave no one behind”:
“we pledge that no one will be left behind. Recognizing that the dignity of the human
person is fundamental, we wish to see the Goals and targets met for all nations and
peoples and for all segments of society. And we will endeavour to reach the furthest
behind first”.7
From this concept of “leave no one behind”, two key implications can be drawn: first, that
the needs, rights and voices of the most marginalised women should be privileged,
recognising that women are not a homogenous group; and secondly, that those facing
intersecting discriminations—that is, those with least power and income—should take
precedence.8
The Agenda also recognises the need to transform structural barriers that stand in the
way of poverty eradication and the reduction of inequalities, including gender
inequalities. It acknowledges that “there are enormous disparities of opportunity, wealth
and power”, and envisions “a world in which every woman and girl enjoys full gender
equality and all legal, social and economic barriers to their empowerment have been
removed”.9 Recognition of the need to transform structural barriers reminds us that
interventions to promote equality will only be successful if the root causes of the problem
are tackled.
Of course, the SDGs are far from perfect10—and unlike human rights frameworks such
as the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women, they
are not legally binding. That said, they do lay out a clearly agreed set of aspirations for
governments and, given the Goals’ prominence in the political discourse, their emphasis
on gender equality and prioritising the most marginalised gives grounds for hope that the
SDG era will see important progress for women’s rights.
Yet despite Agenda 2030’s clear recognition of the criticality of tackling gender inequality
and its root causes, four years after its agreement, actual practice is falling far short.
Discriminatory laws, social norms, social policies and regulatory failures all continue to
perpetuate inequality and disadvantage, but perhaps most pernicious are the barriers
created by economic policies. These persistent barriers are the focus of this briefing,
because we are not only failing to implement needed reforms to secure women’s rights—
in many cases, governments, IFIs and corporations are actually exacerbating the
problem. In the face of mounting evidence, they continue to promote economic policies
that inflame and entrench inequality, such that marginalised women are not just left
behind—they are actively pushed.
ii These are found amongst certain targets that fall under Goal 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 13 and 17.

3. Behind—and pushed
Despite the re-emergence of gender equality on the political agenda, whether at the UN,
the G7, the G20, the WTO or regional spaces like the African Union, or at the IFIs’ annual
and spring meetings, women’s economic, social and political status continues to lag
behind the average across the board.
Still behind
Globally, the pay gap between women and men in paid employment is estimated to be
at least 16 per cent.11 Women in Africa, Asia and the Arab states are overrepresented in
precarious jobs, as well as in the informal sector where there is little regulation or access
to social protection.12 In sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia, high proportions of women
work in typically low-paid roles as contributing family workers (34.9 per cent and 31.8 per
cent respectively) and own-account workers (42.5 per cent and 47.7 per cent
respectively).13 Oxfam estimates that men own 50 per cent more of total global wealth
than women.14 At the same time, the World Economic Forum has determined that, at
current rates, it would take 202 years to close the gender gap in economic participation
and opportunity (based on a basket of indicators covering labour force participation,
income and representation at senior levels).15 One recent analysis looking at 51
indicators across 129 countries found that not a single country was “fully transforming
laws, policies, or public budget decisions on the scale needed to reach gender equality
by 2030”.16
These inequalities are exacerbated when gender intersects with other identity
characteristics associated with discrimination. For example, in the United States, it has
been estimated that single white men own 100 times more wealth than single Hispanic
women.17 Most persons with disabilities are able to work, provided the right adjustments
are in place, yet analysis of data from 51 countries gave the employment rate for women
with disabilities as 19.6 per cent, compared with 29.9 per cent for women without
disabilities. (For men with disabilities the rate was 52.8 per cent, compared with 64.9 per
cent for men without disabilities.)18 To compound the issue even further, more women
than men experience economic hardship in old age.19
…and pushed
In the past the barriers to women’s economic empowerment have been framed around
women’s lack of capacity, with solutions that promote the education, training and access
to credit of individual women. Women are sometimes still described as “vulnerable” and
in need of support. The solution was, and sometimes still is, therefore seen in relation to
providing individual women with the skills, credit and so forth that they need to be able
to compete equally in the market.
More recently, recognition has emerged that women face structural barriers in the
economy and society more broadly, acknowledging the discrimination that remains
regardless of women’s perceived capacity. We have seen, for example, how gendered
social norms around unpaid care and domestic work reinforce occupational segregation,
low pay and poor conditions—and how governments and corporations take advantage
of these norms with policies and laws that maintain discrimination against women’s
rights. This is why the UN High-Level Panel on women’s economic empowerment

recognised “systematic constraints” to empowerment requiring a “transformative
agenda”.20
What has not yet been fully acknowledged by policy makers is the way economic policies
are systematically, and sometimes even deliberately, not just failing to reach women but
actively pushing women behind.
In both the Global South and the Global North, austerity policies are creating a “triple
jeopardy … which sees women suffer simultaneously as public-sector workers, service
users and the main recipients of social security protection benefits”.21 In some countries,
such as Brazil and Egypt, governments are vaunting their progress towards meeting the
SDGs at the UN High-Level Political Forum, while implementing harsh austerity
measures at home.22 Meeting the SDGs’ aspirations on gender equality requires
progressive public spending on public goods and services, but austerity measures
prevent such government spending from taking place. Returning to Bohoslavsky, the UN
Independent Expert on debt and human rights, he writes,
“economic reforms which encourage, among other things, labour market flexibilization,
reductions in the coverage of social protection benefits and services, cuts to public sector
jobs and the privatization of services tend to have a negative impact on women’s
enjoyment of human rights”.23
Alongside these trends in economic policymaking, we have seen a further decline in

democratic economic decision-making and failure to ensure corporate accountability, in
the face of mounting evidence of corporate human rights abuses.24
4. What is going wrong?

While the actual circumstances of women’s work and lives vary greatly across contexts,
and generalisations can obscure significant differences, a number of common themes
and threads are apparent in the way women’s economic inequality is maintained and the
policies responsible for this inequality. The actions of some governments, IFIs and
corporations are still constructing barriers that further hold women back or push them
behind.
Economic policies that push women behind

A heady mix of fiscal and monetary policies, focusing on growth and inflation targets and
designed to minimise the role of the state, have been combined with labour legislation
and trade and investment rules that benefit large corporations.
Austerity measures were first used on a wide scale as part of structural adjustment
programmes in the 1980s and 1990s as conditions for IMF and World Bank lending.25
Similar measures were then used in response to the 2008–9 crisis, and their use is far
from over. Analysis in 2015 anticipated that, on average, 127 countries (or more than
two in every three) would undergo cuts in government expenditure between 2016 and
2020.26 While austerity has made headlines recently in Europe, most austerity
programmes actually affect countries in the Global South.27

While there is no single definition of austerity, the term is generally understood to mean
a programme of severe cuts to public spending in the face of economic recession. These
cuts frequently go hand in hand with other economic reform policies that seek to create
a more favourable environment for businesses, particularly multinational businesses,
and seek to grow government revenues by increasing consumer taxes such as value-
added tax (VAT). This paper focuses on the first two of these elements—public spending
cuts and reforms to regulations governing business and trade—in order to complement
the well-established literature on gender and regressive taxation that already exists.28
Thus, austerity measures have tended to bring about cuts to public services like health,
childcare and social security programmes; privatisation of important social goods like
pensions and utilities; deregulation of financial and labour markets; and cuts to public
sector employment—all of which carry a disproportionate impact on women, and
especially on those marginalised by poverty, racialisation, rural location or other factors.
All forms of austerity are premised on the idea that budgetary deficits are universally bad
and must be eliminated using deep spending cuts—but, as numerous economists have
highlighted, this assumption is, “economically speaking, extremely questionable.”29
Indeed, far from being rooted in objective or technical principles, as it is sometimes
presented, austerity actually relies on highly political assumptions about the optimal size
of the state, about the role of the private sector and about the extent to which private-
sector corporations should be regulated.
Essentially, austerity measures are part of a wider model where inequality is at best an
unavoidable by-product or at worst a central component of the way that the model
works.30 Those who start out poorer tend to lose out most. For example, research on 10
cities in Latin America, Asia and sub-Saharan Africa across four informal work sectors
shows that the global economic crisis hit the lowest-paid and those with the lowest
barriers to entry hardest. These same workers are supplementing with unpaid labour to
maintain family living standards, adding to their economic, physical and emotional
burdens.31
Within this model, public services and social protection in particular are seen as ways of
mitigating the harmful impacts of macroeconomic policy with safety nets targeted
towards the very worst affected. This narrow approach, however, has proven so hard to
implement that it actually threatens to exacerbate existing inequalities.32 This is in part
because the scale of transfers can be derisory relative to the overall impact of austerity.
For example, in Argentina, people reeling from drastic cuts and rapid inflation received
just $36 USD per person to sustain them through a period of six months. 33
Fundamentally, this “band aid” approach of targeted safety nets fails to tackle the
structural causes that are creating inequality and deprivation in the first place.34
The combination of austerity measures, with their focus on cuts in public services and
jobs alongside labour flexibilization, has hindered the achievement of gender equality
and women’s rights. The evidence of the compounding gendered impacts of austerity
has been mounting: research from the International Labour Organization (ILO) shows
that public spending cuts—which are known to reduce women’s paid employment,
increase their unpaid care load and decrease their access to services and social

protection—are incompatible with substantive gender equality, particularly in countries
that have undergone severe austerity programmes following the economic crisis.35
As a result of the discrimination they face, women have been disproportionately

negatively impacted by system-wide cuts. Firstly, the failure to acknowledge the value of
care work to the so-called “productive” economy has been a central problem, hiding the
true cost of austerity. Second, as a result primarily of their socially defined caring roles
and lack of income, women are more reliant on public services and social protection—
and thus harder hit when cuts are made. Third, women are disproportionately reliant on
the public sector for decent work, in part as a result once again of socially defined caring
roles and occupational segregation. Fourthly, women’s concentration in informal and
unregulated or otherwise precarious occupational sectors with little unionisation means
they are more exposed to labour flexibilization measures. Finally, alongside these
austerity measures, we have seen a package of measures on trade and investment
which, combined with a rise in corporate power, have further pushed back women’s
economic and social rights. In the sections below, we examine each of these in turn.
Box 1: Austerity and the IMF

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been—and continues to be—highly
influential in the design of austerity programmes and associated economic policies
such as regulatory reforms and increases in VAT.36 The IMF exerts this influence in
several ways. One key channel of influence is the conditions attached to IMF loans.
For example, the IMF’s 2016 loan agreement with Egypt included policy
prescriptions such as public spending cuts, the introduction of VAT and new policies
to encourage foreign investment—reforms that have been associated with very high
levels of inequality, including on the basis of gender.37 A second key channel of
influence is IMF policy analysis, like Article IV surveillance, which is often perceived
by external financiers as a reliable judgement of the overall fitness of an economy. 38
As such it can play a powerful role in encouraging governments to enact new
austerity policies, or providing cover for existing ones. For example, in Brazil, the
IMF gave strong backing to a constitutional amendment under which public
spending was to be frozen for 20 years from 2016. The measure is already having
drastic impacts on basic services such as the provision of medicines.39 While certain
pieces of IMF research have pointed to some of the risks of austerity, this research
is as yet rarely translated into practice in the IMF’s country-specific operations.40
These negative impacts from austerity and related policies clearly undermine the
achievement of many SDG targets. For example, by exacerbating unpaid care and
domestic work burdens, austerity endangers target 5.4 (“Recognize and value unpaid
care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social
protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and
the family as nationally appropriate”).41 Labour flexibilization puts at risk several targets
under Goal 8, such as target 8.8 (“Protect labour rights and promote safe and secure
working environments for all workers, including migrant workers, in particular women
migrants, and those in precarious employment”).42 But the damage done by austerity
goes even further than these individual targets, by eroding the ethos of quality public
service provision and democratic space on which so much of Agenda 2030, with its

ambitions on gender equality and “leave no one behind”, depends. This process of
erosion is unpacked in more detail in the sections that follow.
Taking care for granted

As a result of socially defined and discriminatory gender roles, women have primary
responsibility for care and domestic work in most societies. That women do far more
unpaid care and domestic work than men has been well documented: for example, the
ILO estimates that women perform 76 percent of total unpaid care work worldwide. 43 The
impact of this disproportionate work on women’s rights generally—and specifically on
their ability to secure decent work, education and political space—has also been well
established.44 As a result of this gendered division, care and domestic work is
undervalued and frequently unpaid. In 2013, Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona, the UN
Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, found that,
“heavy and unequal care responsibilities are a major barrier to gender equality and to
women’s equal enjoyment of human rights, and, in many cases, condemn women to
poverty. Therefore, the failure of States to adequately provide, fund, support and regulate
care contradicts their human rights obligations, by creating and exacerbating inequalities
and threatening women’s rights enjoyment”. 45
What has been less well documented is the crucial and vast contribution that this unpaid
care and domestic work makes to the wellbeing of society and to economic
development.46 Even in good times, governments rely on unpaid care work to fill gaps in
social spending and supplement the health and education sectors.47 Corporations also
benefit from the maintenance of their current workforce and shaping of future workers.48
Ai-jen Poo, director of National Domestic Workers Alliance in the United States,
highlights that, “Domestic work makes all other work possible”.49
It is in times of austerity that we really see how women are pushed behind. A pervasive
assumption is that women’s time for unpaid care is infinite and elastic: the UN
Independent Expert on debt and human rights recently found that, “Cuts to social
services also often intensify the demand for unpaid care work, which is disproportionately
carried out by women and girls (notably in poor households) and, thus, forcing them to
fill the gaps”.50 For example, cuts in healthcare have sometimes led to the early
discharge of people suffering from chronic illnesses, in the expectation that household
members (usually women) will support their long-term care at home.51 Research on
austerity measures in Tanzania at the turn of the millennium found that, as health
services were slashed, home-based care frequently became the only support system
available to people affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic.52 Cuts in social protection
payments that affect people’s ability to live independently (such as certain pension
reforms foe the elderly) will further increase women’s unpaid care and domestic work.53
Thus, and importantly, it is not just that such cuts inadvertently increase women’s unpaid
care and domestic work—rather, they are made on the assumption that women will fill in
the gaps, “acting as the ultimate safety net”.54 On the one hand, SDG 5.4 states the need
to “recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public
services, infrastructure and social protection policies, and the promotion of shared
responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate”.55 Still, we
have yet to see real action to reduce women’s unpaid care and domestic work burden

through increases in public services, social protection and sustainable infrastructure
investment.56 Instead economic policies continue to ignore, or even depend on, gender
inequality and discriminatory social norms.57
Cuts in public services and social protection

Cuts in public spending continue to be a central part of austerity measures, justified as
a way to get out of economic crisis and frequently adopted on the basis of advice by the
IMF and other IFIs. Recent research on the conditions attached to IMF loans approved
in 2016 and 2017 found that, out of 26 sampled programmes, 23 were conditional on
fiscal consolidation, often in the form of spending cuts.58 In Ghana, for example, fiscal
targets attached to an IMF loan have been associated with public spending cuts and
public sector wage bill restrictions, affecting basic services such as education and
health.59
Public spending cuts can markedly heighten barriers that limit women’s access to quality
public services. This can include cuts to services that benefit the general population, but
which women may use most due to social norms (e.g. unpaid care responsibilities),
specific biological needs (e.g. certain healthcare services) or rights violations requiring
support and redress (e.g. violence against women and girls).60 For example, recent cuts
of 2,500 healthcare jobs in Ecuador or 25,000 in Ukraine are likely to hit women
particularly hard due to their particular reliance on some health services and the health
care needs of people for whom they have caring responsibilities.61 Similarly, the removal
of subsidies for water in Ghana will have had disproportionate impacts for women, since
collecting water is usually regarded as women’s work.62 Argentina has also experienced
severe public spending cuts and other related economic reform policies, as Box 2 sets
out.
Sometimes the impact of cuts have been more direct: in Brazil, women’s rights
programmes, including services for survivors of violence against women and girls, saw
a 40 per cent budget cut between 2014 and 2016.63 At the same time, rates of violence
were increasing, leaving many without assistance.64 Cuts in public services tend to have
particularly serious effects for women who experience multiple intersecting forms of
discrimination, like in Spain where non-pregnancy related sexual and reproductive
healthcare was withdrawn from migrant women with irregular status, and in practice
many were even denied pregnancy-related care.65
Cuts in social protection are also a common feature of austerity and, particularly in the
case of universal social protection, of economic reform programmes championed by the
IMF. The governments of Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan withdrew universal child benefits
under just this kind of IMF pressure.66 Any cuts in state provision of social protection also
affect women particularly, due to the gender pay gap and other inequalities that mean
women are over-represented in lower income groups.67 Women are more likely to work
in the informal sector, with less access to work-based pension schemes or other benefits.
In fact, concentration in the informal sector is likely to be one reason why nearly 40 per
cent of women in waged work globally do not contribute to social protection schemes like
pensions; for women in southern Asia, this figure rises to over 70 percent.68
Moreover, even where older women do have a pension the amount is likely to be less as
a result of lower earnings over their lifetime, owing to lower wages and competing

demands of unpaid care work. This makes women more reliant on non-contributory
social protection benefits, usually funded by government taxes.69 In addition, family-
related benefits tend to be channelled to women due to social perceptions about their
caring roles, and sharp cuts to such benefits hit women’s incomes hard. In the UK, an
analysis of the cumulative impact of tax and benefit changes between 2010 and 2015
found that on average women lost around £400 GBP per year, and men only £30 GBP.70
In Brazil, a 55 per cent reduction in food security programmes was found to be especially
harsh for low-income mothers.71 As ever, women who face intersecting discrimination on
the basis of factors including ethnicity or disability are likely to be affected particularly
severely.72
Box 2: Austerity in Argentina

Argentina has seen severe austerity policies in recent years, which were intensified
in exchange for an IMF loan of $50 billion USD in 2018 and further entrenched when
the IMF granted an increase to the loan a few months later.73
The ensuing cuts had far-reaching implications for basic public services on which
women are heavily reliant. Between 2018 and 2019 alone, the health sector budget
fell by 8.1 percent in real terms, compounding previous financial challenges that had
already left some provinces’ public health provision in a state of emergency.74
Investment in water and sanitation, which had been stable at around 2 percent of
public expenditure between 2012 and 2015, dropped to 1.4 percent in 2016 and 0.3
percent in 2017, with further cuts anticipated under the latest austerity measures.
Over 10 per cent of households are not connected to a clean water supply network,
and over 30 per cent lack sanitation.75 Under reforms to the pension system, a plan
that enabled persons who had not met minimum contribution requirements to
receive benefits was abolished, with a disproportionate impact on women who--due
to unpaid care work and other inequalities--had accounted for three out of every four
people who benefited from this scheme.76 Austerity also hit gender-specific
spending: despite some increase in funding for public childcare services, the 2019
austerity budget saw an overall 19 per cent decrease in spending for gender-
focused programmes.77
Argentina’s austerity programme also saw large numbers of public-sector workers

lose their jobs, while the buying power of those still in their jobs decreased by 11.9
per cent (compared with 5.7 percent for registered workers in the private sector)
between November 2015 and May 2018.78 In addition, regulations governing
dismissals have been scaled back and collective bargaining activities have been
restricted, leaving workers more vulnerable to exploitation.79
Youth unemployment levels are high in the country, particularly among women: as
of April 2019, a reported 21.5 per cent of women aged 14–29 were unemployed,
compared to 17.3 per cent of men in the same age group. In the year 2018–19,
poverty levels grew by over 6 per cent, reaching 32 per cent of the population.80

Job cuts
Under austerity, cuts in public sector spending have hit women’s employment. Women
make up a disproportionate share of frontline workers in the public service sector—for
example, 67 per cent of the global health workforce.81 Due to social norms and
occupational segregation, women tend to be concentrated in areas of the public sector
that are often most exposed to cuts, including service delivery, lower-level administrative
positions and temporary or part-time positions.82 A study of 183 countries’ plans between
2010 and 2015 found that 130 were considering reducing their wage bills, a recurrent
feature of austerity programmes that entails job losses and salary reductions for public-
sector employees.83
Such reforms are often influenced by the IMF: analysis of the conditions attached to IMF
loans approved in 2016 and 2017 found that, out of 26 sampled programmes, 21
included measures relating to wage bill reductions.84 Thus, in Gabon, sharp IMF-
supported deficit reduction targets prompted the government to reduce doctors’ salaries
and to pay them in cash vouchers. In response, the doctors’ syndicate threatened an
unlimited strike.85 In 2015, the IMF advised Jamaica that “efforts are urgently needed to
sustainably lower the wage bill by creating a smaller and more effective public sector.
Such efforts should begin immediately since they will take time to yield results”.86 In
Zimbabwe, the IMF held that “achieving a sustainable fiscal position requires a significant
reduction in the wage bill”, proposing that wages be reduced from around 66 per cent of
government expenditure in 2016 to 50 per cent in 2019.87 Zimbabwe’s government
recently announced that 3,000 public-sector jobs would be cut.88 In Ukraine, the
government cut 165,000 civil service jobs in 2014–15, partly to comply with IMF loan
requirements. These cuts had a disproportionate impact on women who comprise more
than 75 per cent of the civil service.89 In Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia and Portugal,
public-sector employment cuts led to job losses in occupations where women hold a
higher share of employment.90
Labour flexibilization and poor conditions

Women’s labour force participation has been high on the agenda recently: for example,
G20 leaders have committed to reduce the gap in women’s labour force participation in
their countries by 25 per cent by 2025.91 But all too often this is justified by its impact on
growth, with little real attention paid to the quality of jobs and level of wages—the factors
that make work empowering.92 Instead, many governments’ austerity programmes have
been accompanied by a drive towards labour flexibilization, which undermines decent
work. Research on 187 countries’ policies between 2016 and 2020 found that 49 low-
income countries and 40 high-income countries are promoting labour flexibilization
policies, which—according to the report’s authors—“include relaxing dismissal
regulations, revising minimum wages, limiting salary adjustments to cost of living
benchmarks and decentralizing collective bargaining”.93
In Jordan for example such policies have resulted in a situation where, in the words of
one think tank, “nearly all instances of social dialogue on labour issues seemed to have
been predetermined in favour of employers” and “the possibilities for productive social
dialogue and the development of policies based on agreements between workers,
employers, and government seem ever more distant”.94 In Egypt in 2016, the government

introduced controversial legislation to cut the public-sector wage bill by reducing labour
rights, a move closely linked to IMF involvement. 95
Achieving gender equality requires an improvement not just in women’s access to paid
work, but also in the conditions under which they work. A number of ways of doing this
have been identified, such as minimum wages and collective organising, which could go
some way toward reducing gender wage gaps, even for informal-sector workers.96 To
that end, Pakistan’s minimum wage has been extended to cover bidi cigarette rollers in
the informal sector.97 Women’s collective action has also been shown to improve their
working conditions, as in the case of Kenya’s domestic workers in 2012.98 In the United
States, the wage gap for unionised women is 40 per cent smaller than for non-union
women.”99
Yet the move towards the flexibilization of labour has often restricted these opportunities
for positive change. Reform of collective bargaining was a criterion in IMF lending
programmes to Portugal, Greece, Spain and Romania following the 2008 financial
crisis.100 Furthermore, the IMF recently called for restrictions on the minimum wage in its
policy advice or lending conditionalities for Lithuania, Colombia, Greece, Bolivia and
Ecuador.101
Trade and investment liberalisation

Trade liberalisation, or the process of removing perceived barriers to international trade
(e.g. tariffs) and opening up economies to external investors, is often part of the package
of reforms associated with austerity. In particular, liberalisation is a recurrent component
of financing conditionalities imposed by the IMF and other IFIs.102
Trade itself has the potential to contribute to gender equality and women’s rights, if the
right checks and balances are in place.103 Yet trade liberalisation, as it is currently
practised, has often had a negative impact on the lives of women for several reasons.104
For starters, liberalisation tends to reduce governments’ fiscal space to implement
gender-transformative public services by bringing about revenue losses, either through
reduction of tariffs and custom duties or through trade-related illicit financial flows.105
Furthermore, liberalisation often tends to be associated with a weakening of workers’
protections and wages in a bid to attract foreign firms competing on the basis of cost;
this tends to affect women workers particularly, as they tend to have fewer options than
men and hence a weaker bargaining position.106 In addition, many trade agreements
contain far-reaching protections for the interests of international businesses (for
example, the Investor-State Dispute Settlement system) even where these infringe on
the rights of local people, potentially including gender-specific safeguards.107
Democratic decision-making and corporate power

In part in response to austerity’s negative impacts, civil society organisations around the
world have called for the democratisation of economic decision-making, with a particular
focus on the inclusion of women’s rights organisations. Instead, economic decision-
making is becoming even less democratic, a trend aggravated by further austerity. In
some countries, the perceived crisis of austerity has been used as a pretext to introduce
new restrictions on civil and political rights, while the squeeze on public budgets has

sometimes translated into a reduction in funding for civil society organisations whose
work includes campaigning against inequalities.108
At the same time, the private sector is increasingly given a place at the table as a key
development partner. These developments are not unrelated: growing private-sector
involvement is often justified by the logic of austerity, which holds that there are
insufficient public funds to provide key infrastructure and services. For example, the
Nairobi Outcome Document of the Global Partnership for Effective Development
Cooperation envisages “engaging business entities in a partnership that mutually
benefits business strategies and development goals”.109 Likewise, the World Bank’s
“Maximising Finance for Development” approach very explicitly states that the private
sector should be the first port of call in development finance, enticed if necessary through
regulatory reforms or the “blending” of public and private finance, while purely public
finance should be the last resort.110 Public-private partnerships (PPPs)iii are a case in
point where austerity measures have been used as a way to open up public services to
corporate interests. PPPs are often promoted, including by the World Bank and other
IFIs, as a way to deliver infrastructure and services when governments are unable to do
so because they have to comply with austerity budgets.111
This discourse assumes a strong degree of alignment between corporate interests and
development objectives, including gender equality, although there is a lack of evidence
to support this.112 The Sierra Leonean women who have lost their basic incomes and
food sources in the wake of opaque and possibly even coercive land deals to make way
for large-scale biofuel projects might see things differently.113 So too might the 300,000
rural Ugandan women who have been forced from their homes or are facing eviction due
to land-grabbing by large oil, transport and sugar corporations.114
There is now a level of “corporate capture” in economic policy decisions—an effect that
tends to be amplified in times of austerity, as state resources for effective regulation and
tax collection are diminished.115 As Global Policy Forum states,
“…big business has consolidated its influence on global governance and the United
Nations in particular. In that multilateral setting, corporate actors have been granted
privileged access to decision-makers, and their interests have become more prominent
as calls for legally binding instruments for TNCs become more sidelined”. 116
The United Nations has an important role to play by promoting the SDGs and upholding
human rights, and slow progress is being made—through an Open Working Group
convened by the UN Human Rights Council, for instance.117 Nonetheless, the absence
of a legally binding treaty to regulate the human rights impacts of transnational and other
corporations remains a significant obstacle in the fight to increase accountability and
hold some of the worst abuses of corporate power in check.118 Meanwhile austerity
measures are, at least in some instances, further opening the door to corporate interests.
iii
Following Eurodad, FEMNET and GADN (2019), we define public-private partnerships as agreements
wherein private-sector companies replace the state as the provider of traditional public services, and where
the public and private sector share the risks associated with the project in some agreed way.

5. The alternatives
The SDGs, and particularly SDG 5, will never be achieved while women and girls
continue to be pushed behind. Governments and institutions that are serious about
gender equality and women’s rights must now take a long, hard look at the impacts—
intentional or not—of the economic policies that they promote.
In an important recognition of the extent of the problem, the UN Independent Expert on

debt and human rights presented a detailed set of guiding principles, setting out how
carefully states must think about their human rights obligations before they proceed with
austerity policies. The principles emphasise that, “economic reform should aim to
prevent gender discrimination and transform existing inequalities, instead of creating
such situations”.119
There is a myriad of alternatives, and a wealth of literature to support them.120 In the

words of the ILO,
“It is often argued that social protection is not affordable or that government expenditure
cuts are inevitable during adjustment periods. But there are alternatives, even in the
poorest countries [that] are supported by policy statements of the United Nations and
international financial institutions”.121
The global independent civil society report Spotlight on Sustainable Development 2018
also provides a wealth of alternative proposals that are not only necessary but also
possible.122 Detailed prescriptions for aligning economic policy and human rights have
also been put forward by academics like Radhika Balakrishnan, James Heintz and Diane
Elson.123
The aim of this briefing is not to present a blueprint but merely to indicate that there are
other possibilities, and that without considering alternatives, true progress on the
SDGs—and particularly SDG 5—may be stalled forever. Below we outline some of these
alternatives for decision-makers to test whether their economic policies are gender-
just—in other words, whether they contribute as much as they could to the SDGs’
ambitions on women’s rights and gender equality. The questions are not exhaustive, but
they challenge our economic orthodoxy and illustrate the diversity of alternative
approaches to consider.
Are public-sector cuts necessary?

 Has progressive taxation been considered as an alternative to
austerity?
Spending policy is only one part of the fiscal picture: revenue policy is just as important.
Many options exist to generate additional resources through progressive taxation—such
as income, capital, property and wealth taxes—and fully exploiting these channels can
generate vital resources to realise social goals, including gender equality.124 However,
consumption taxes such as VAT can impose disproportionate burdens on women, so
selecting a progressive mix of taxes is key.125

 Are all reasonable steps being taken to tackle tax avoidance?
Global rules on tax need to be reformed too, in order to create more space for action by
national governments. An array of measures has been identified, including corporations
committing to pay their taxes in the countries in which value is added, country-by-country
reporting, shutting down tax havens and minimum corporate tax rates—all of which
Northern governments should support.126
 Could strategic spending be a better way out of crisis?
Cutting public expenditure is not necessarily the best way out of economic crisis if it leads
to a reduction in social investment that reduces human capabilities. Sometimes
increasing investment in social spending can in turn create a rise in both demand and
productive capacity, and so have a more positive impact on long-term growth—a point
that has been argued in a number of UN reports.127 A report by the International Trade
Union Confederation also showed that investing in the care economy had the potential
to generate substantial gains in employment, at the same time as promoting gender
equality.128
Could better decisions be made on where to make cuts?

 If cuts are unavoidable, has the impact on women been assessed?
The starting point for any tough choices on spending cuts has to be a full, gender-
responsive, human rights-based impact assessment. Such an assessment should follow
the principles set out by the UN Independent Expert on debt and human rights, which
emphasise the risks of gender-based and intersectional discrimination associated with
austerity.129 Gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) is also an important tool now being
used by some countries to assess how government resources are shared and targeted,
and should inform decisions on how cuts are made.130
 Is the economic contribution of the care economy understood?
As the costs and benefits of alternative options are weighed up, it is essential for the full
economic contribution of unpaid care and domestic work to be comprehensively
recognised; otherwise, the true costs of austerity measures are hidden. One option is to
include the value of unpaid care work in national accounts, thus exposing the currently
hidden contributions and costs. To this end, UN Women suggests building on the 2013
recommendations of the International Conference on Labour Statisticians, which called
for a redefinition of work.131
 Do cuts comply with international law?
Even if cuts are necessary, social spending may not be the best place to make them.
Human rights law obliges states to provide essential levels of economic and social
rights—which in practice means at least basic, non-discriminatory social services such
as healthcare and access to medicines, even in times of crisis. Measures that would
result in negative impacts to human rights enjoyment are generally prohibited by the
principle of non-retrogression, but where “retrogressive measures” are truly unavoidable,
human rights law sets out strict criteria before cuts to existing levels of services can be

made. Among other requirements, they should be temporary, seek to mitigate
inequalities and be imposed only after an examination of all other alternatives.132 Human
rights law also requires that whatever resources are available should be distributed in a
way that does not discriminate, including on the grounds of gender.133
Could crisis be prevented in future?

 Has the government taken steps to promote long-term stability?
Governments have many options at their disposal to help prevent some of the most
destabilising effects of economic crises. These include taking steps to regulate the flow
of finance in and out of the country via capital controls—a strategy previously deployed
by Brazil, China, Colombia, Chile, India and Malaysia.134 More cautious regulation of the
financial sector, as required by SDG target 10.5, would also help prevent banks from
building up unsustainable debts.135
 Are providers of aid and development finance living up to their

commitments?
Aid and other forms of public development finance, including that from IFIs, can be a
critical resource for countries in the Global South undergoing economic crisis; however,
as this briefing has outlined, this finance can do harm as well as good if it is attached to
conditions that lead to an intensification of austerity, or to other intrusions on
governments’ space to implement gender-just economic policies. Governments in the
Global North have a responsibility to step up the quantity of aid provided and to meet the
long-established target (reiterated in the SDGs) of giving 0.7 per cent of their gross
national income as official development assistance. They also have a duty to ensure this
aid is spent in accordance with the agreed principle of respect for democratic ownership
of development priorities by citizens of the Global South, without imposing policy
conditions.136
Are economic policies that promote gender equality and women’s

rights prioritised?
 Does policymaking engage with the importance of the care economy?
Recognising the key role of care and domestic work, both in the wellbeing of society and
the functioning of the economy, will expose the reforms needed in this sector and reveal
that there is no alternative but for governments to prioritise and increase spending in this
area.137 Quality provision of affordable care must be more broadly available, particularly
for the poorest. Meanwhile, paid workers in the care and domestic work sector need
better working conditions and pay, which in turn will increase the quality of provision.138
 Is the creation of decent work a priority?
If participation in the paid workforce is to advance gender equality and women’s rights,
then policies will be needed that promote decent work, particularly for the large numbers
of women who work in the informal sector where work is unregulated, insecure and
precarious. Measures will need to include increasing the quality and quantity of jobs
available to women in the public sector though investment in social infrastructure,

implementing a universal living wage and collective bargaining protections to reduce the
gender pay gap, ratifying and enforcing existing ILO conventions, and funding and
recognising women’s workplace organising, particularly in the informal sector.139 Longer-
term shifts in discriminatory cultural norms will also be needed to break down
occupational segregation in the paid work place, while the gendered division of labour
that assigns women a primary role in unpaid care and domestic work will also need to
be tackled.140
Are people’s rights put before corporate interests?

 Do investment agreements put people before private investors?
Private-sector financing is in many cases governed by investment agreements, which all

too often are designed to protect the interests of private investors rather than those of
people in recipient countries. Investment agreements can only work in favour of gender
equality and women’s rights if such a perspective is built in from the outset of the
negotiations. All investment agreements should be subject to gender and human rights
impact assessments, and should be fully compliant with human rights and labour
obligations that take precedence over any rights of investors.141
 Are decisions on privatisation and trade liberalisation based on

assessment of their social impacts?
Privatisation and trade liberalisation are widely promoted as a response to economic

crisis, but before rushing to adopt such measures, it is vital that governments assess
their impacts on human rights, including gender equality and women’s rights. They
should also be weighed up against the alternative responses discussed elsewhere in this
briefing.142 Effective corporate regulation, and speedy progress towards a strong binding
treaty on transnational business and human rights, are also essential.143
 Is economic growth recognised as a tool in aid of social goals like

gender equality and women’s rights, or are social goals subsumed
under the pursuit of growth?
There remains a fundamental contradiction between Agenda 2030’s ambitions on

ensuring that no one is excluded and the neoliberal economic paradigm that continues
to shape global economic decision-making, in which economic growth is paramount.144
Monetary and fiscal targets are frequently given precedence over social goals or the
fulfilment of human rights. Economic activity can be an important means of reaching
broader social goals, but it cannot be an end in itself, as Diane Perrons writes.145 This is
not a new concept: in fact, it was only with the expansion of neoliberalism that the
primacy of growth was embedded.
Is economic decision-making democratic?

 Are economic decisions recognised as political?
Decisions on macroeconomic policy are some of the most important choices that
governments and institutions make, with profound impact on the distribution of resources
and welfare of society. Yet these decisions are frequently obscured within democratic

processes, or presented as merely technical. The result is not only a democratic deficit
but also a reduction in the efficacy of policymaking.146
 Are the views of marginalised women actively sought?
The transparency, openness, responsiveness and accountability of the institutions that

develop and implement macroeconomic policy, both nationally and internationally,
should be improved. At the international level, there are calls for the IMF and World Bank
to become more accountable through reforming their governance to give an equal say
to countries in the Global South, and to enhance transparency towards civil society and
the public. Governments should also protect rights to freedom of association, collective
bargaining, assembly and speech to allow women workers to join unions, workers’
organisations and other groups campaigning for human rights in austerity contexts, and
to engage in policy debates and negotiations. Specifically, space should be created for
marginalised women’s voices in economic decision-making, with government funding for
organisations led by and for marginalised women, and protection for women human
rights defenders and labour activists from harassment, intimidation and retaliation.
6. Conclusion
Dominant trends in economic policy—including austerity, labour market flexibilization,
privatisation and the liberalisation of trade and investment rules—continue to
disproportionately impact on women because of entrenched inequalities in labour market
access, remuneration and norms around unpaid care and domestic work. Indeed, the
availability of women’s unpaid care as a “shock absorber” is a premise on which cuts to
public services are based.147
As this briefing has illustrated, the harmful impacts of economic reform policies adopted
in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis range from the removal of vital services for
survivors of violence against women in Brazil, through increased challenges accessing
basic water supplies in Ghana, to widespread job cuts in Zimbabwe. Women facing
intersecting inequalities have faced particular risks, while narrowly targeted safety nets
have fallen far short of mitigating the damage.
A wealth of alternatives exists. The damage done by austerity policies shows all too
clearly why it is essential for governments to refocus their economic policymaking on
human rights, equality (including gender equality) and wellbeing, rather than the single-
minded pursuit of economic growth and profit. Before undertaking economic reform
policies, governments should take a long, hard look at the likely impacts on gender
equality, human rights and economic justice—and fully consider the range of alternative
options. This, in turn, requires a reform of the way that economic policies are formulated.
The voices of marginalised women must be brought to the fore, and third parties like the
IFIs should leave space for this to happen rather than imposing policy prescriptions.
Women are not just being left behind from the fruits of economic growth—they are
pushed back by economic policies that reinforce and even rely on gender inequality.
Without fundamental reform to economic policymaking, the laudable ambitions of
Agenda 2030 to promote gender equality and women’s rights for all women will remain
a distant aspiration.

7. Recommendations
The following recommendations are not an exhaustive list of the steps needed to
create a gender-just economic system. Rather, these recommendations highlight
key considerations for governments in relation to austerity specifically. In
addition, recognising the damaging impact of many of their policy prescriptions,
the IFIs should stop imposing policy conditions that interfere with governments'
space to put these recommendations into practice.
Governments should:
 Prioritise the promotion of gender equality and women’s rights in economic policy
decisions, including through application of the new guiding principles on human
rights impact assessment of economic reforms.148
 Recognise, redistribute and reduce the burden of unpaid care and domestic work,
and promote opportunities for decent work for women.
 Avoid cuts in social spending and adopt alternative strategies to tackle crises,
such as progressive taxation, clamping down on tax avoidance and making
strategic investments in social infrastructure.
 Ensure that, if austerity really is necessary, cuts do not fall disproportionately on
women by using full impact assessments that examine hidden costs, particularly
of unpaid care and domestic work, and considering the full range of options as to
where cuts can be made.
 Take steps to prevent future crises by regulating in a way that promotes stability,
ensuring that trade and investment agreements uphold women’s rights and (for
donor governments) meeting longstanding commitments on aid quantity and
quality.
 Promote democratic economic decision-making, which entails actively seeking
the meaningful participation of marginalised women and their organisations.
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56
GADN. 2019. How social protection, public services and infrastructure impact women’s rights. London:
GADN, 12–13. https://gadnetwork.org/gadn-news/2019/1/8/new-briefing-how-social-protection-public-
services-and-infrastructure-impact-womens-rights
57 Fraser 2016.
58 Brunswijck, G. 2018a. Unhealthy conditions: IMF loan conditionality and its impact on health financing.
Brussels: Eurodad, 12, 18. https://eurodad.org/files/pdf/1546978.pdf

59 Osei-Assibey, E. and N. Kachingwe. 2019. ‘Gender-responsive public services and macro-economic
policy in Ghana’, ActionAid briefing paper, pp. 15, 17. https://actionaid.org/publications/2019/gender-

responsive-public-services-and-macro-economic-policy-ghana
60 Donald and Lusiani 2017, 36.

61 EcuadorInmediato. 2019. ‘Ministra Veronica Espinosa confirma 2.500 despidos en el sector de salud’,
24 June.
http://www.ecuadorinmediato.com/index.php?module=Noticias&func=news_user_view&id=2818853442;
Alternative Youth Centre, Center for Social and Labour Research, Centre of the Future, Child Smile, East
Donbas Regional Development Agency, Gender Dnipro, Theatre for Dialogue and WILPF. 2017.
‘Obstacles to women’s meaningful participation in peace efforts in Ukraine: impact of austerity measures
and stigmatisation of organisations working for dialogue’, joint submission to the UPR working group, 28 th
session, November, p.10. Geneva: WILPF. https://wilpf.org/wp-
content/uploads/2017/04/UKRAINE.UPR_.JointSubmission-30-Mar-2017.pdf
62 Osei-Assibey and Kachingwe 2019, 30. For more on social norms and affordability/accessibility of clean
water, see WEDO. 2003. Diverting the flow: a resource guide to gender, water rights and privatisation.
New York: WEDO. https://wedo.org/wp-content/uploads/2003/11/divertingtheflow.pdf
63 INESC, Oxfam Brazil and CESR 2017, 5; Salvador, E. 2014. As Implicações do Sistema Tributário
Brasileiro nas Desigualdades de Renda. Brasília: INESC and Oxfam.

https://www.inesc.org.br/as-implicacoes-do-sistema-tributarios-brasileiro-nas-desigualdades-de-renda/
64 Custódio David, G. 2018. ‘The unreality of promoting the SDGs without a sufficient budget’, Social
Watch, 14 September. http://www.socialwatch.org/node/18072

65 UNGA 2018, para 12; CESR. 2018. ‘Spain’, Visualizing Rights factsheet no. 17, p. 5.
http://www.cesr.org/sites/default/files/FACTSHEET-Spain(EN)-June2018-FINAL.pdf
66 Kidd, S. 2018. ‘Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan lose out in their struggle with the IMF over the targeting of child
benefits’. Orpington: Development Pathways. https://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/blog/mongolia-

kyrgyzsg-child-benefits/
67 Donald and Lusiani 2017, 35.
68 GADN 2019, 1; ILO 2016, xiii.
69 ILO 2016, 33.
70 Portes, J. and H. Reed. 2018. The cumulative impact of tax and welfare reforms. Manchester, UK:
Equality and Human Rights Commission, 20.

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/cumulative-impact-assessment-report.pdf
71 INESC, Oxfam Brazil and CESR 2017, 4.
72 Women’s Budget Group with Runnymede Trust, Coventry Women’s Voices and RECLAIM. 2017.
Intersecting inequalities: the impact of austerity on black and minority ethnic women in the UK. London:
Women’s Budget Group, 26. http://wbg.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Intersecting-Inequalities-
October-2017-Full-Report.pdf; Emejulu, A. and L. Bassel. 2015. ‘Minority women, austerity and activism’,
Race and Class 57.2, 86–95; Women’s Budget Group. 2018. Disabled women and austerity: briefing from
the UK Women’s Budget Group on the impact of austerity on disabled women. London: Women’s Budget
Group, table 1. https://wbg.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Disabled-women-October-2018-w-cover-
2.pdf
73 Ellmers, B., M.J. Romero and G. Brunswijck. 2018b. ‘20 years on: has the IMF really changed its
ways?’, Eurodad, 24 July. https://eurodad.org/argentina-20-years-on; Brunswijck, G. 2018. ‘Argentina:

more lending guarantees creeping austerity’, Eurodad, 31 October. https://eurodad.org/argentina-lending-
guarantees
74 Fundación Soberanía Sanitaria. 2018. ‘Avance contra la salud pública’, InformeFSS no. 37—
presupuesto en salud 2019, p.5. http://soberaniasanitaria.org.ar/wp/avance-contra-la-salud-publica/;

Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales. 2018. ‘The state of economic, social and cultural rights in
Argentina’, p. 5. https://www.cels.org.ar/web/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/reportsESCR.final_.pdf
75 Alternative civil society report on Argentina’s progress on the SDGs quoted in Bissio, R. 2018.
‘Alternative national reports throw light on inequalities’, Spotlight on sustainable development 2018:
exploring new policy pathways. Bonn: Civil Society Reflection Group on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
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76 Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales 2018, 2.
77 Centro de Economía Política Argentina. 2018. ‘El impacto del ajuste en las mujeres: la dinámica del
empleo y el Presupuesto 2019’, 19 October. https://centrocepa.com.ar/informes/110-el-impacto-del-ajuste-

en-las-mujeres-la-dinamica-del-empleo-y-el-presupuesto-2019.html
78 Ellmers, Romero and Brunswijck 2018; Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales 2018, 4.
79 Burgisser, E. 2019. ‘The IMF and gender equality: operationalising change’. London: Bretton Woods
Project, 8. https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Operationalising-Change.pdf
80
Zorzoli, L. 2019. ‘The Consequences of Mr Macri’, NACLA, 19 April.
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81 Buchan, J., I.S Dhillon and J. Campbell (eds). 2017. Health employment and economic growth: an
evidence base. Geneva: WHO, 31. https://www.who.int/hrh/resources/WHO-HLC-Report_web.pdf

82 UN Women 2015c, 205.
83 For example Brunswijck 2018a, 13–14; Ortiz, Cummins, Capaldo and Karunanethy 2015, 12.
84 Brunswijck 2018a, 19.
85 Brunswijck 2018a, 19.
86 IMF 2015, para 30, quoted in Bretton Woods Project. 2016. ‘The IMF and gender: a critical analysis’, 8.
https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/final-gender-briefing-1-for-online-
version-7.pdf

87 IMF. 2016. Zimbabwe: staff report for the 2016 Article IV consultation and the third review of the staff-
monitored program—press release; staff report; and statement by the Executive Director for Zimbabwe.
Washington: IMF, 3, 11. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/CR/Issues/2016/12/31/Zimbabwe-Staff-
Report-for-the-2016-Article-IV-Consultation-and-the-Third-Review-of-the-Staff-43882
88 Samaita, K. 2018. ‘Zimbabwe announces austerity measures to spur stalling growth’, Business Live, 23
November. https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/world/africa/2018-11-23-zimbabwe-announces--austerity-
measures-to-spur-stalling-growth/
89 WILPF 2017 quoted in Donald and Lusiani 2017, 35.
90 Vaughan-Whitehead 2013 quoted in ILO 2016, 69.
91 G20. 2014. ‘G20 leaders’ communique’, para 9. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/23866/g20-
leaders-communiqu%C3%A9-brisbane-summit-15-16-november-2014.pdf
92 United Nations. 1979. Convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, 18
December, UN treaty series vol. 1249, art 11.

https://www.ohchr.org/documents/professionalinterest/cedaw.pdf
93 Ortiz, Isabel, Matthew Cummins, Jeronim Capaldo, and Kalaivani Karunanethy. 2015. “The Decade of
Adjustment: A Review of Austerity Trends 2010-2020 in 187 Countries”, ESS working paper no. 53, pp. 12,
35. https://www.social-protection.org/gimi/RessourcePDF.action?ressource.ressourceId=53192;
94 Awad 2018 quoted in Bissio 2018, 29–30.
95 El-Badrawi, M. and A. Corkery. 2017. ‘Egypt’s new IMF deal comes with a huge price tag for human
rights’, At Issue, Bretton Woods Project. https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/wp-

content/uploads/2017/03/At-Issue-Egypt%E2%80%99s-new-IMF-deal-comes-with-a-huge-price-tag-for-
human-rights.pdf
96 UN Women 2015c, 99–100, 120; Solidarity Center, AFL-CIO, and CWGL. 2016. Transforming women’s
work: policies for an inclusive economic agenda. Washington: Solidarity Center, 14.
https://www.solidaritycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Gender_Report.Transforming-Women-
Work.3.16.pdf
97Paycheck. n.d. Minimum wage report: Pakistan. Ahmedabad: Indian Institute of Management, 4.
https://paycheck.pk/images/PAKISTAN.pdf
98 WIEGO. 2016. Economic and employment rights: advancing domestic workers’ leadership. Manchester,
UK: WIEGO, 23 https://www.wiego.org/sites/default/files/resources/files/DomesticWorkers-

Economic%20and%20Employment%20Rights-JDave-CaseStudy-Nov2016.pdf
99 Solidarity Center, AFL-CIO and CWGL 2016, 7; National Women’s Law Center. 2015. ‘Gender wage
gap for union members is 40 percent smaller than for non-union workers, NWLC analysis shows’, 23
January. http://nwlc.org/press-releases/gender-wage-gap-union-members-40-percent-smaller-non-union-
workers-nwlc-analysis-shows/
100 Bretton Woods Project 2016, 9.
101 ITUC. 2019. ‘IMF attacks on minimum wages are misguided and destructive’, 3 April. https://www.ituc-
csi.org/imf-attacks-on-minimum-wages-are
102 See, for example, Brunswijck 2018a, 13.
103 GADN. 2017a. Making trade work for gender equality. London: GADN, 1, 7–9.
https://gadnetwork.org/gadn-resources/2017/7/4/making-trade-work-for-gender-equality-1
104 See GADN 2017a.
105 Baunsgaard, T. and M. Keen. 2005. ‘Tax revenue and (or?) trade liberalization’, IMF working paper
WP/05/112. https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2005/wp05112.pdf; Global Financial Integrity. 2019.

Illicit financial flows to and from 148 developing countries: 2006–2015. Washington: Global Financial
Integrity, ix. https://secureservercdn.net/45.40.149.159/34n.8bd.myftpupload.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/01/GFI-2019-IFF-Update-Report-1.29.18.pdf?time=1560599321
106 GADN 2017a, 4; Berik, G. 2011. ‘Gender aspects of trade’, in M. Jansen, R. Peters and J.M. Salazar-
Xiranachs (eds) Trade and employment: from myths to facts. Geneva: ILO, 180; FAO and World Bank.
2013. Gender equality and food security: women’s empowerment as a tool against hunger. Manila: Asian
Development Bank, 46. https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/30315/gender-equality-and-food-
security.pdf; UNCTAD. 2014. Virtual institute training material on trade and gender: unfolding the links.
New York and Geneva: UNCTAD, 37. https://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/gds2014d1_en.pdf
107 GADN 2017a, 7; Broad, R. 2015. ‘Corporate bias at the World Bank Group: the World Bank Group’s
International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes,’ At Issue, Bretton Woods Project, 28
September. https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/2015/09/corporate-bias-at-the-world-bank-group/
108 Saiz, I. and L. Holland. 2016. ‘Under the knife: human rights and inequality in the age of austerity’,
State of civil society report 2016. New York: CIVICUS, 152. https://www.civicus.org/documents/reports-
and-publications/SOCS/2016/Under%20the%20knife-
%20human%20rights%20and%20inequality%20in%20the%20age%20of%20austerity%20.pdf
109 Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation. 2016. Nairobi outcome document. New
York and Paris: UNDP and OECD, 16. http://effectivecooperation.org/wp-

content/uploads/2016/12/OutcomeDocumentEnglish.pdf
110 Bretton Woods Project. Gender-just macroeconomics: the World Bank’s privatisation push. London:
Bretton Woods Project, 4, 12–13. https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/wp-

content/uploads/2019/03/Privatising-womens-rights-WEB.pdf

111 Eurodad, FEMNET and GADN. 2019. Can public-private partnerships deliver gender equality?
Brussels: Eurodad, 5. https://eurodad.org/files/pdf/can-public-private-partnerships-deliver-gender-
equality.pdf
112 Meeks, P. 2017. Mixed messages: the rhetoric and the reality of using blended finance to ‘leave no-one
behind’. Brussels: Eurodad, 8–11. https://eurodad.org/files/pdf/1546844-mixed-messages-the-rhetoric-and-

the-reality-of-using-blended-finance-to-leave-no-one-behind--1511464491.pdf
113 Ryan, C. 2018. ‘Large-scale land deals in Sierra Leone at the intersection of gender and lineage’, Third
World Quarterly 39.1, 189–206.

114 Womankind. 2019. ‘Reclaiming women’s rights: Uganda’s eco-feminist movement’, 8 March.
https://www.womankind.org.uk/blog/detail/our-blog/2019/03/08/reclaiming-women-s-rights-uganda-s-eco-
feminist-movement
115 Donald, K. 2017. ‘Squeezing the state: corporate influence over tax policy and the repercussions for
national and global inequality’, Spotlight on sustainable development 2017: reclaiming policies for the
public. New York/Bonn/Montevideo: Civil Society Reflection Group on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development, 97–100. www.2030spotlight.org/en/book/1165/chapter/10-squeezing-statecorporate-
influence-over-tax-policy-and-repercussions-national
116 Global Policy Forum. 2014. ‘Privatizing global governance: corporate influence at the United Nations’,
GPF policy briefing 1. https://www.globalpolicy.org/images/pdfs/GPFEurope/GPF__Briefing_1.pdf

117 HRC. 2019b. ‘Open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other
business enterprises with respect to human rights’.

https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/WGTransCorp/Pages/IGWGOnTNC.aspx
118 Donald 2017, 100; GADN 2016, 6.
119 HRC 2019a, principle 10.
120 See, for example, Martens, J. 2018. ‘Redefining policies for sustainable development: how to close
gaps and overcome contradictions in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda’, Spotlight on sustainable
development 2018: exploring new policy pathways. Bonn: Civil Society Reflection Group on the 2030
Agenda for Sustainable Development, 17–21.
https://www.2030spotlight.org/sites/default/files/spot2018/Spotlight_2018_web.pdf; UN Women. 2014. The
global economic crisis and gender equality. New York: UN Women, 68–76. http://www.unwomen.org/-
/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2014/theglobaleconomiccrisisandgendereq
uality-en%20pdf.pdf?la=en
121 Ortiz, I., M. Cummins and K. Karunanethy. 2017. ‘Fiscal space for social protection and the SDGs:
options to expand social investments in 187 countries’, ESS working paper no. 48, p. iii.
https://www.social-protection.org/gimi/gess/RessourcePDF.action?ressource.ressourceId=51537
122 Civil Society Reflection Group on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. 2018. Spotlight on
sustainable sevelopment 2018: exploring new policy pathways. Bonn: Civil Society Reflection Group on
the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, 17–21. Bonn: Civil Society Reflection Group on the 2030
Agenda for Sustainable Development.
123 Balakrishnan, R., J. Heintz and D. Elson. 2016. Rethinking economic policy for social justice: the radical
potential of human rights. London: Routledge.

124 Donald and Lusiani 2017, 40; Simeoni, C. and S. Muchai. 2018. ‘SDG 5: women, macroeconomic
policies and the SDGs’, Spotlight on sustainable development 2018: exploring new policy pathways. Bonn:
Civil Society Reflection Group on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, 120.
125 Buenaventura and Miranda 2017, 10.
126 See for example proposals by ICRICT (https://www.icrict.com/about-icrict/) and Tax Justice Network
(https://www.taxjustice.net/).
127 See for example UNCTAD. 2013. Trade and development report 2013: adjusting to the changing
dynamics of the world economy. New York and Geneva: United Nations, 80.
http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/tdr2013_en.pdf; UN Women 2014.
128 ITUC. 2016. ‘Investing in the care economy: a pathway to growth’, 8 March. https://www.ituc-
csi.org/investing-in-the-care-economy-a; see also Brunswijck 2018a, 16.

129 HRC 2019a, especially principles 7 and 8.
130 Women’s Budget Group. 2017. ‘What is gender responsive budgeting?’, 17 May.
https://wbg.org.uk/resources/what-is-gender-budgeting/
131 UN Women 2015c, 83.
132
UN Economic and Social Council. 2016. Public debt, austerity measures and the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Statement by the Committee on Economic, Social and
Cultural Right, Statement on public debt, austerity measures and the ICESCR, 22 July, E/C.12/2016/1.
https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=E%2fC.12%2f2016
%2f1&Lang=en
133 UN Economic and Social Council. 2016; HRC 2019; UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights. 2012. ‘Letter to States parties’, 16 May.

https://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cescr/docs/LetterCESCRtoSP16.05.12.pdf
134 Cordero, J.A. and J.A. Montecino. 2010. ‘Capital controls and monetary policy in developing countries’,
research report for Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, DC.
https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/115241/capital-controls-2010-04.pdf

135 UNGA 2015, target 10.5; UN Women 2015b, 3.
136 Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation. 2011. Fourth High Level Forum on Aid
Effectiveness, Busan, Republic of Korea, 29 November–1 December, p. 3.
https://www.oecd.org/dac/effectiveness/49650173.pdf
137 ‘Statement on African Women’s Economic Justice’. 2018. African Women: Economic Futures, 2.
http://awdf.org/wp-content/uploads/AWEF-Statement-FINAL.pdf
138 GADN. 2017b. Sharing the load: unpaid care work and women’s economic empowerment. London:
GADN. https://gadnetwork.org/gadn-resources/2017/2/7/sharing-the-load-unpaid-care-work-and-womens-
economic-empowerment
139 ILO 2016; UN Women 2015c, 99–100, 120; GADN. 2017c. Stepping up: how governments can
contribute to women’s economic empowerment. London: GADN. https://gadnetwork.org/gadn-

resources/2017/2/7/stepping-up-how-governments-can-contribute-to-womens-economic-empowerment
140 GADN 2017b.
141 GADN 2017a, 8–9.
142 GADN 2017a, 8–9.
143 Feminists for a Binding Treaty. 2018. ‘Women’s rights beyond the business case: ensuring corporate
accountability’, 5. http://actionaid.org/sites/default/files/fem4bt_2018_-
_womens_rights_beyond_the_business_case.pdf
144 Razavi 2016.
145 Perrons, D. 2015. ‘Gendering the inequality debate’, Gender and Development 23.2, 218.
146 Srilatha, B. 2012. ‘What does transforming economic power mean?’, OpenDemocracy, 18 April.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/srilatha-batliwala/what-does-transforming-economic-power-mean
147 See, for example, Elson, D. 1998. ‘The economic, the political and the domestic: businesses, states
and households in the organisation of production’, New Political Economy 3.2, 11.
148 HRC 2019.
Acknowledgements
This briefing was written by Jessica Woodroffe and Polly Meeks as part of GADN’s Gender
Equality and Macroeconomics project and in collaboration with FEMNET. GADN would like to
thank Crystal Simeoni, Kate Donald, Rachel Noble, Sophie Efange, Emma Burgisser, Gino
Brunswijck, Megan Daigle and Marion Sharples for their helpful comments. Thanks is due also
to Diane Elson for the original concept.
The Gender and Development Network (GADN) brings together expert NGOs, consultants,
academics and individuals committed to working on gender, development and women’s rights
issues. Our vision is of a world where social justice and gender equality prevail and where all
women and girls are able to realise their rights free from discrimination. Our goal is to ensure that
international development policy and practice promotes gender equality and women’s and girls’
rights.
July 2019
Gender and Development Network For more information Disclaimer

c/o ActionAid For more information about GADN, GADN produces a series of
33–39 Bowling Green Lane please email the GADN Coordinator briefings for use by our members
London EC1R 0BJ at coordinator@gadnetwork.org and others in consultation with
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Original artwork: Snigdha Podder, for Gender and Development Network

2. Agenda 2030—great expectations?

Push no one behind www.gadnetwork.org 2

In addition, core to the Agenda is the concept of “leave no one behind”:

Push no one behind www.gadnetwork.org 3

Push no one behind www.gadnetwork.org 4

Alongside these trends in economic policymaking, we have seen a further decline in

4. What is going wrong?

Economic policies that push women behind

Push no one behind www.gadnetwork.org 5

Push no one behind www.gadnetwork.org 6

As a result of the discrimination they face, women have been disproportionately

Box 1: Austerity and the IMF

Push no one behind www.gadnetwork.org 7

Taking care for granted

Push no one behind www.gadnetwork.org 8

Cuts in public services and social protection

Push no one behind www.gadnetwork.org 9

Box 2: Austerity in Argentina

Argentina’s austerity programme also saw large numbers of public-sector workers

Push no one behind www.gadnetwork.org 10

Labour flexibilization and poor conditions

Push no one behind www.gadnetwork.org 11

Trade and investment liberalisation

Democratic decision-making and corporate power

Push no one behind www.gadnetwork.org 12

Push no one behind www.gadnetwork.org 13

In an important recognition of the extent of the problem, the UN Independent Expert on

There is a myriad of alternatives, and a wealth of literature to support them.120 In the

Are public-sector cuts necessary?

Push no one behind www.gadnetwork.org 14

 Could strategic spending be a better way out of crisis?

Could better decisions be made on where to make cuts?

 Is the economic contribution of the care economy understood?

 Do cuts comply with international law?

Push no one behind www.gadnetwork.org 15

Could crisis be prevented in future?

 Are providers of aid and development finance living up to their

Are economic policies that promote gender equality and women’s

 Is the creation of decent work a priority?

Push no one behind www.gadnetwork.org 16

Are people’s rights put before corporate interests?

Private-sector financing is in many cases governed by investment agreements, which all

 Are decisions on privatisation and trade liberalisation based on

Privatisation and trade liberalisation are widely promoted as a response to economic

 Is economic growth recognised as a tool in aid of social goals like

There remains a fundamental contradiction between Agenda 2030’s ambitions on

Is economic decision-making democratic?

Push no one behind www.gadnetwork.org 17

 Are the views of marginalised women actively sought?

The transparency, openness, responsiveness and accountability of the institutions that

Push no one behind www.gadnetwork.org 18

Push no one behind www.gadnetwork.org 19

equality and women's rights’, Gender and Development 24.1, 25–41.

dgreports/---dcomm/---publ/documents/publication/wcms_650553.pdf; ILO. n.d. ‘Informal economy’,

Funders Network, 6. https://assetfunders.org/resource/women-wealth-insights-grantmakers/

systems’, policy brief no. 3, p. 1. http://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2015/12/women-

York: UNDP. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/15806Brazil_English.pdf; INESC,

equality. London: GADN, 5. https://gadnetwork.org/gadn-news/2016/5/26/new-gadn-briefing-breaking-

politics of clandestine institutional change’, American Journal of Sociology 124.6, 1720–1762.

10 years on from the financial crisis’, 20 April. https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/2018/04/lost-decade-